by Alec Clayton
Slow work means careful work, it means thoughtful work and detailed work. In the case of the art exhibition by that name featuring paintings by Susan Christian and pottery by Steve Belz at Childhood’s End Gallery it means excellent, thought provoking and beautiful art.
Photos courtesy Childhood’s End
I have seen and reviewed and much admired Christian’s art since first seeing it in around 1989, and I must say this is the best body of work this critic has yet seen from her. This is masterful art.
Most of the pieces in this show are abstract paintings in acrylic on pieces of wooden lathe, based on views from her home looking out over Totten Inlet. Reverence for the water and the distant mountains is clear even in the most abstract of her paintings. Nearly each piece is dominated by the color blue with accents in other colors — predominantly reds and yellows, and black and white, tiny, critically placed zips and flashes of contrasting color, most commonly shades of red and orange, black and white.
Photo courtesy Childhood’s End
Loss Love is a field of subtly modulated blue created by (I think I counted correctly) 17 horizontal strips of wooden lathe. In the middle right of the blue field is a thin painted red stripe with a yellow tip that appears to hover there, and below that is a another red stripe that overlaps as lighter blue horizonal. It is as simple as that, and it is mesmerizing.
Photo courtesy Childhood’s End
Break is a field of light blue with at the middle top two black and gray shapes that appear to be fighting. Or appears to be attempting to be eating the other. It is another painting that can be almost infuriating (or fascinating) in its simplicity.
In Rise Up, short dark blue lathe strips march across the top while alternating dark and light lathes below it create four vertical rectangles and one dark blue stripe, and Out Of Nowhere has an illusionary mass of dark blue on a lighter blue field seems to this reviewer to be the depths of a deep cave.
These paintings on found strips of wood display deep thought and slow study of the natural world, and deep love of the media with which the artist works.
Three small, almost perfectly round ceramic bottles by Steve Belz stand together just inside the plate-glass front window of the gallery, the surfaces glazed with multiple colored organic shapes. In all, there are 20 of these bottles, all fired not in a kiln but in a bonfire. All of the bottles are basically the same shape with slight variations in size. There is beauty here that does beyond the striking first sight.
The art in this show should be viewed slowly, as they were made. It is a must-see show.
WHAT: |
Slow Work, paintings by Susan Christian and ceramics by Steve Belz
WHEN:
10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, through July 26
WHERE:
Childhood’s End Gallery, 222 4th Ave. W, Olympia
LEARN MORE:
https://www.childhoods-end-gallery.com/
360.943.3724